Empire Strikes Back Model/Playset

I had almost thought I had imagined this toy until I saw this ad in an 1982 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. It is a model of the ice planet Hoth from Empire Strikes Back. I had this toy, and I remember having it, but prior to seeing this ad, I was never sure if what I remembered was a Star Wars, Buck Rogers, or Battlestar Galactica toy. I’m not sure if that’s the result of the toy’s poor quality (I don’t remember it being that top shelf) or just the conflux of all those space-oriented shows. In any case, it was cool to see the ad and prove that I wasn’t having a phantom memory.

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8 thoughts on “Empire Strikes Back Model/Playset”

vinvectrexsays:

I had this one too. And you’re right – while it looks great on the box, it was pretty flimsy in actuality. And, while it was a snap together model, you really needed to paint it (precisely) for it to look decent. Suffice to say I wasn’t able to do that.

I had the Yoda one as a kid and yes, the quality was not good. It took a lot of work to make it look like the box art. I found it frustrating due to the lack of precision. I didn’t have the Hoth battle scene, but that is something on my bucket list to build.
Not to leach off our post, but here is the Dagobah kit that I just revisited and finished up: http://aaronroshdotcom.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/encounter-with-yoda-on-dagobah/

This is it! I had the Hoth playset when I was little and loved playing with it, but I could never remember exactly what it was called nor was I ever able to find info about it (apparently my Google skills need work). I painted a few of the tiny (tiny) little Hoth infantry men and the speeders. The playset seemed so big when I was a kid…I wish I knew what happened to it. I know a lot of the army guys got lost but even after the entire playset went away, I would always find parts in various LEGO bins and boxes. For some reason I always had arebel turret laying around. So cool, if you find any pictures of the actual playset please post add them to this post.

And the nice part about the Hoth set is that it came as white plastic, so you never really needed to paint it to look good :) I can imagine if the Yoda set was just flat white plastic, painting that would be a pain. The Dagobah set seems more model and less playset, where the Hoth had all these individual pieces and guys, so it was most certainly a playset in my house. I too remember the base being very thin plastic, mine had a big rip/crack in it eventually.